Ode to the Toilet

A Free Verse Poem On the Essential Maintenance of Everyday Life

Photo by Samantha Wallen

Your thin cold rim
has startled me awake
more times than I can count
brought me to my knees
in ceremonial prostrations
to hang my head low & deep
in the coolness of your bowels
to express my sins all night
in sick & drunken confessionals
hell Mary’s & promises of redemption
or to bow down and take my vows
in the lineage of…